Friday, March 28, 2008

Vegan Mom made the pizza dough from Vegan With a Vengeance (our favourite) today. Who doesn't love pizza on homemade crust? Well, the problem was that we have not gone shopping since we got back from the holiday weekend and the fridge is looking pretty empty. Nary a mushroom or pepper to be found. So, I thought I would make a veggie ground round to go with the pepperoni. The plan was to make something like the chick'n quick seitan but more . . . "beefy." At first, things seemed to be going well. I used gluten flour, ground TVP, and tapioca to get a firmer dough, while stir fry sauce, HP sauce, and soy sauce provided flavour and colour. Then, things started to go wrong. After steaming the seitan was pretty rubbery and a bit sticky to the touch. Undaunted, I pushed onward! I figured that if I chopped it up and fried the seitan it would dry out a bit. Well, it did dry it out. A lot. But still I pressed on! All in all, it did not wreck the pizza too much. After baking the seitan was verging on crunchy, but the flavour was OK. Oh well. Back to the test kitchen.

Pizza looks yummy & reading this post put a smile on my face! I'm not yet a proficient cook & my husband said yesterday that I should go to TJ's and get some pizza dough and try to make a pizza... maybe I can plan a surprise and just make the recipe for homemade dough... even if it doesn't turn out great, I think it's the attempt that counts sometimes.

Hey Vegan Dad, The pizza looks amazing - despite the style-cramping woes of the silly seitan. In my opinion, it looks as though your kids and vegan mom were pretty lucky to be noshing on such a decadent looking outcome to the kitchen cramp.

Re: Yesterday's post - I hear you about wanting to do more. I agree with you about how the vegan blogging world might seem a bit insular at times, however, I also feel pretty strongly about the potential food has to transcend boundaries like "vegan/vegetarian" and other labels. Getting your work posted on Tastespotting is a great example of how you can bring your thoughts, opinions, (pizza triumphs) and convictions to a wider audience.